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Expert says breakthroughs unlikely at Kocharyan-Aliyev summit

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  • Expert says breakthroughs unlikely at Kocharyan-Aliyev summit

    RIA Novosti, Russia
    Aug 24 2005

    Expert says breakthroughs unlikely at Kocharyan-Aliyev summit



    MOSCOW, August 24 (RIA Novosti, Andrei Malyshkin) - No breakthrough
    agreements should be expected from the Armenian-Azerbaijani
    presidential summit August 27, a leading Russian political analyst
    said Wednesday.

    Konstantin Zatulin, the Director of Russia's Institute for CIS
    Studies and a member of the CIS affairs committee in the State Duma,
    parliament's lower house, said it is highly unlikely that the
    upcoming meeting between Armenia's Robert Kocharyan and Azerbaijan's
    Ilham Aliyev in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, will resolve
    problems that have been plaguing the two countries' relations for
    years.

    "There have been all kinds of problems arising at meetings between
    Armenia and Azerbaijan at various levels-there was a time when the
    president of Azerbaijan would ostentatiously refuse to meet with the
    president of Armenia-[so] the mere fact that such a meeting [is
    taking place] is good news," Zatulin said.

    But he said he did not see any prerequisites for diplomatic progress
    in solving problems that had accumulated between the two countries
    over the years, most notably the long-standing dispute over Nagorny
    Karabakh, a region inside Azerbaijan with a predominantly ethnic
    Armenian population.

    Asked whether he thought the redeployment of personnel from the
    Russian military bases in Georgia to Gyumri, in Armenia, could help
    resolve the Karabakh conflict, Zatulin said Azerbaijan was using the
    issue to once again accuse Russia and Armenia of conspiring against
    it. "The Armenia-Russia relationship is one of a common defense and I
    think [officials] in Azerbaijan should realize that," he said.
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